


To Be Soft

by KaytiKazoo



Series: Synonymous With Home [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, College Student Percy, F/M, Laundry room sex, Medical Student Pike, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-21 22:03:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13152930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaytiKazoo/pseuds/KaytiKazoo
Summary: No one, not even her own best friend, knew what they were up to, and there was just something exhilarating that they might get discovered, might get caught at any moment. Whenever they fumbled around each other in a closet at a party, or snuck into each other's homes without alerting their roommates, it just made the whole thing more enjoyable.





	To Be Soft

There was something thrilling about no one knowing, about slipping away from their friends to meet up in the dark, about their relationship being forged in the shadows when she'd strived to live in the light for so long. He was electric, tasting a little bit like a storm brewing nearby, the tingle of his kiss leaving ghosts along her skin. He was intoxicating, making her lose what good sense Sarenrae had given her for just a few more minutes in Elysium with him. No one knew, and not in the way that Keyleth and Vex'ahlia had tried to be. No one, not even her own best friend, knew what they were up to, and there was just something exhilarating that they might get discovered, might get caught at any moment. Whenever they fumbled around each other in a closet at a party, or snuck into each other's homes without alerting their roommates, it just made the whole thing more enjoyable.

Not that she thought she wouldn't enjoy his company without the secrecy. Good sex was good whether or not people knew who you were fucking. Well, she hoped. She hadn't gone from secret to public before, so she wasn't sure she could tell that, but there was just something inherently sexy to her about riding her lover in the backseat of his car parked underneath the shade of an old weeping willow at night, in the liminal space of public and private with the most to lose but oh,  _so much_  to gain. 

"Hello?" Percy called, stepping into the apartment, their door left unlocked so guests could filter in and out as they pleased. Pike had been hosting this for years, since probably about sophomore year of undergrad, where she invited her struggling friends over for a health mixture of studying and relaxation. She'd found that it worked to destress everyone, and also kept them in high confidence. 

"Hey Perc, come on in!" Pike called, selecting the study playlist she'd made a few years back. She tweaked it every semester to include new releases or remembered oldies, but mostly it was the same playlist. She kept it to soft jazz and video game scores, without words if she could help it. She bustled back to the kitchen to pull out the snacks she'd prepared, first the cheese and cracker platter, then the chips and dip tray, and finally the cupcakes she'd picked up from the Slayer's Cake on the way home. 

"Everything looks great," Percy said, setting his bookbag on the couch next to Pike's. He followed her into the kitchen and glanced around, adjusting his glasses on his face. "Am I the first one?"

"You are."

"Good," he muttered. He leaned down and kissed her, just a soft press of lips as a preview of things to come. "You look amazing."

She hadn't dressed intentionally to please Percy, but she knew what he liked on her, and somehow those things had become the main portion of her wardrobe. She wore a pair of comfortable leggings paired with a loose tank top that dipped low to reveal her bandeau.

"Mmm, thank you." 

He backed away as the door to the apartment creaked open, announcing the next guest's arrival. She plastered her hostess smile on and called out a greeting. She swatted Percy lightly on the ass and ushered him towards the living room without a word. He gave her a flirty smile, but went just the same. 

The twins walked in as Percy settled onto the couch farthest from the door so he had eyes on the door and his back to the wall. Vax announced his presence by jumping over the back of the couch closest to the door to land gracefully on his back. Vex scoffed and told him he was ridiculous, to which Vax flipped her off, and she threw her keys at him, which he deftly snatched out of the air. They traded some choice words that came freely between siblings, none with actual malice. It made Pike smile, her friends free and comfortable in her home, standing off to the side of the doorway into the living room. She wanted that more than anything; she wanted to be the safe space her friends found a home in. 

More friends filtered in, some from work and some from classes. It was a small get together, not too many people, but enough to fill her living and dining room. She greeted everyone, pointed to where certain groups were forming, reminding people she'd gotten some wine for everyone, but if they drink, they were not driving. Finally, she settled into her seat with her medical school friends. The night passed easily. People drank some wine, and ate more snacks, and chatted while they worked. 

She kept her eye on Percy, though, chatting with Vex while they worked on separate problems. They weren't in the same major, but no one really understood what Percy was studying anyway. They worked well together, though, keeping each other entertained while still plugging away at their studies. Pike liked watching the way Percival smiled, he didn't do it often enough.

Every time he smiled, she was reminded of the intimate twinkle in his eyes whenever they met up. He was gentle with her in a way that he never was; he was smoke and electricity, ingenuity and sharp wit, but with her, he smiled and caressed, he was light and laughter. He left his shroud of guilt at the door whenever they met up. Even now, though, through his smiles at Vex, she could see the darkness around him, the weight of his own past sitting upon him.

She stood from her group, excusing herself for a few minutes. 

She passed from group to group, talking to each one to make sure they were okay, before settling between Vex and Percy.

"Hey Perc, there's something I need you to look at. I totally forgot, and I know you're busy, but if I don't now-"

"Absolutely," he said. "I'll be back, Vex."

"Take your time, you weren't helping me with this anyway."

Pike led him into the laundry room down the hall by the bathroom, and shut the door once they were inside. 

"I was wondering when you'd come get me. I've felt you staring at me all night," he said, pressing her into the washing machine. "You have been driving me crazy."

He dipped his mouth down to her neck and then her collarbone.

"I didn't want to be too obvious that this was a ploy for a secret fuck in the laundry room."

"Playing the long game, I see, Trickfoot," he said between the kisses he feathered along her skin. His hands left light fleeting touches along her sides, tickling at the edges of her bandeau. "Started planning this particular ploy in sophomore year."

"Wrong, DeRolo. I've been planning this since freshman year."

He laughed and dropped his hands to her thighs just to lift her up. She wrapped herself around him while he pressed her into the machine again, using it to keep her steady while he pushed the bandeau down her torso to expose her breasts. She hummed happily, her hands fisting his silky white hair. He pushed her own white braid away from her shoulder to get at the curve of her neck. 

"Fuck me," she muttered while he traced his expansive name into her skin with his fingertips. He touched her like she was made of porcelain, something more fragile than she was. It made her forget that she was scarred, that she was broken. If she'd been porcelain once, she'd been shattered and put back together with cement and slate. The foster system had a tendency of churning out igneous adults, made from cooled magma left from volcanic eruptions. "Percy,  _please_."

"I will," he promised. "You know I will."

"Then-"

He cut her off with a kiss. She couldn't figure out where to place her hands, so they roamed his body freely. She untucked his button up from his pants, and then started for the buttons, tugging roughly at the fabric to get the buttons free. He wasn't usually a button-up kind of boy, but he knew, and Pike knew, that it was the easiest thing to undress so he wore them just for her. She dragged her fingertips down the skin of his chest, wondering at scars and marks he'd accrued over his years. With a gentle tug of his chin, she pulled his mouth to hers. She always forgot the simplest details about his kisses, the bristle of his stubble against her chin, the tilt of his head, the tease of his tongue. She got so caught up in him, in his intoxicating nearness that she almost didn't hear it.

Hear  _him_.

Grog.

He was a large figure, his steps lumbered down the hallway. She almost didn't hear him slow down before the laundry room, but she did. She shoved Percy away and slid down the washer to tug up her bandeau back into place. Percy let out a small chuckle and knelt down by the dryer to pretend he was fixing it. The door opened, and Grog stepped into the doorway. He paused.

"Hey Pike," he said.

"Hey Grog," she replied. He looked between her and Percy, but didn't look at her different. 

"How's studying going?" he asked. That's what Pike loved about Grog, not that he didn't pick up on stuff sometimes, but that if he had, he was going to act like he wasn't. 

"Good," Pike answered. 

"That's good. I've got work early tomorrow, so I'm gonna hit the hay," Grog said. "I just need to wash these."

He held up his gym bag.

"I'll do that, you go to bed."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, it'll be fine. I've got it. Go to bed, Grog."

"Thanks, Pike."

He stepped out of the laundry room, leaving his gym bag by the door. She stepped towards the door and pushed it shut. She turned back towards Percy.

"Well, that was close," she said with a chuckle.

"Does that door lock?" he asked. She flipped the lock without breaking eye contact, but then busied herself with getting Grog's gym clothes out of the bag and into the washer. "What are you doing?"

She tossed in the items in a clump, and said, "listen, you're going to fuck me in this room, and this washer is going to cover the sounds I'm going to make when you make me cum. That sound good to you, DeRolo?"

"Trickfoot," he said, stepping against her and kissing along her neck, "it will be my gods damned privilege."

There was something thrilling about the knowledge that someone could find out that Percy was dragging his mouth along her bare skin while he shed her of her clothes. Anyone could find out how he pressed his hips into her, teasing her nipples with bare-brush touches that drove her crazy. He touched her in a way that she'd never been touched before every time, like they were trying this out for the first time. He could have her anywhere he wanted, any way he wanted, but he still chose to be delicate with her until she begged for more. She loved that about him, his conscious decision to be good to her even when he wasn't a soft person. He tried, and that's what drew her to him. That, and his fingers. 

He was an artist, working with small parts all day, so his fingers drew with expertise the long, barely hushed moans from her lips. She undressed him hastily, his pants falling around his ankles with a single motion, and his shirt dropping to the floor. The washing machine whooshed and gurgled behind them, covering their panting and groans.

Outside the room, they could hear the smooth jazz kick up with a saxophone solo and a group bust out with a peel of laughter that lasted a while, rolling like waves as something started them up again; inside the room, Percy and Pike shared the same breath, moans floating between them, wrapping them like a cocoon, a chrysalis made of their own secrecy, their own pleasure. He lifted her up and set her against the wall beside the washer, the surface holding her up while he thrust into her, keeping her steady. She let her head dip back against the wall and he attacked her throat with open-mouthed kisses. If she died here, if Sarenrae took her now, she would walk into the fields of Elysium on a wave of bliss. Nothing was better than this, nothing better than Percival against her, around her, inside her. Sweet gods, she-

"Pike," Percy murmured sweetly into her ear, kissing the skin below it. She ran her hands through his hair away from his face so she could look into his crystalline blue eyes. "Pike."

She loved the way he said her name, the way it tumbled from his well-trained lips. 

She loved-

Her thoughts jumbled, blurred, scrambled as they tried to form, her entire existence becoming a white-hot center of desire and hope, pleasurable, nothing to hold her down, just Percy and her floating in some liminal space together, his name tumbling over and over from her own mouth unbidden. In that moment, though, she knew what she'd never said aloud before, never allowed herself to realize. 

She loved him. She loved every part of him. When they curled together at night sometimes after they, and she hated this term until she knew Percy, made love, he'd tell her about his family. He'd trace their names into her skin, and he'd tell her about them. He told her about Julius, and Vesper, and Oliver, and Whitney, and Ludwig, about his parents, Frederickstein and Johanna. She told him return about her parents who had dumped her at a fire station when she grew tiresome to them, and had found Grog who had been severely abused and removed from his home. They spoke in whispers, their voices low enough only to carry to each other. They seemed afraid that the world would crash in on them, steal each other away. Somewhere, though, between him tracing her scars with his fingertips, (his favorite was the one down her eye where a violent foster sibling had lashed out with a knife and scarred her forever) and their traced scarred pasts, she had fallen in love with him. It was inevitable, of course. He was an intelligent, pretty dungeon rat of a boy, a fallen prince she'd found shrunk in the shadows of himself, just her type, and he treated her like she was an angel. How could she not fall in love with this boy whose name was longer than she was tall, who stood in the sunlight and disappeared into shadow, who never stopped working, his mind never ceasing? It was inevitable. 

"I love you," she murmured, mouth flush against his ear. His breaths came in pants, heat resting against her chest as he settled from the high of his orgasm. "I love you, Percy."

"I love you," he replied in a hushed whisper. His breath ghosted across her chest, leaving goosebumps in its wake. "I love you so much."

"Do you maybe want to get dinner some time?" she asked. He laughed, tipping his head up so their eyes met. 

"I would love that, Pike. I would really,  _really_ like that."

**Author's Note:**

> This was a little self-indulgent rarepair nonsense my brain worked up after hearing Percy was the person Pike had loved, so here you go. I hope you enjoy. Thanks to Mer, as always, for keeping my shit in line and making me give this an actual ending rather than stopping halfway through because my brain stopped working.  
> -K


End file.
